


Rooks & Kings

by ladymelodrama



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Brocket Hall, F/M, Family Fluff, Rooks - Freeform, autumn vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymelodrama/pseuds/ladymelodrama
Summary: Melbourne finally realizes that it's better to contemplate the rooks...together <3
Relationships: William Lamb 2nd Viscount Melbourne/Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819-1901)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	Rooks & Kings

**Author's Note:**

> I happened to rewatch Episodes 1-3 recently and got hit by a major wave of Vicbourne feels. So anyway, this little fic happened :)

Some things never change.

Year after year, autumn comes to London and I inevitably retire to Brocket Hall, to escape the unwinnable traps of politics and the wearisome demands of society, if only for a little while. 

It’s a refuge that I can’t deny myself, pulling on my boots and long green jacket to wander the stone paths and wooded park behind my house. The winds off the North Atlantic turn chilly and sharp this time of year and the leaves fall from their branches in shivering whirlwinds of color—all spun gold, scarlet red and pumpkin orange. 

The black-winged rooks gather on bare limbs, chattering between themselves, cawing out like common crows and I sit with my back braced against that old moss and lichen-covered monument in the center of two crossed paths, my hands folded in my lap, placidly, watching the birds stretch their wings and huddle together.

I contemplate silence and solitude. Thinking they’re both _highly_ overrated.

And easily overcome, as I hear the crunch of familiar footsteps on the stone pathway behind me, and a woman’s voice speaking softly to the child in her arms, her gaze heavenward, pointing out white, puffy clouds in the crisp, blue October sky and how much they resemble rabbits and foxes and “don’t you see its long, fluffy ears, darling?” 

I turn at Victoria’s sweet voice, my grin worn in and devoid of all that wistfulness and near sorrow that I know it must have held the first time she walked this path and I saw her, in crushed violet and a black lace veil—the Queen of England coming to meet me here in secret, to discuss matters of the heart.

Hers, mine. _Ours_. 

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Lord Melbourne,” Victoria says slyly, as she shifts the baby higher on her hip, approaching my perch. She’s brought her gaze down from the clouds and finds me watching them, mother and daughter, with a tender look on my face, I’m sure. 

She chooses her words purposefully. Then, _now_. The little minx never fails to remind me of our first conversation in this place, and how dismally it went. She’d honored me with a proposal that my heart _ached_ to accept. I thought I didn’t deserve her love and told her so.

_You cannot give it to me._

I’d been stubborn. I’d hurt her deeply, knowing that I hurt her, telling myself that it was necessary—for her safety, for her future happiness. But what kind of fool injures the woman he loves? Or denies her anything she asks for?

She’d walked away from me then, with tears in her pretty eyes.

But now she walks _towards_ me, with our child in her arms. And I rise to meet them, gladly. The baby’s wide, chestnut-brown eyes are the same bewitching color as her mother’s. Her dark hair resembles both of us. As Victoria comes closer, the baby reaches for me with both hands. 

“How could Her Majesty disturb me?” I counter, in much the same tone, as I pluck Elizabeth from her arms. It’s a many times practiced motion as we pass her back and forth throughout the day. Our daughter seems to have no preference for which one of us holds her, so long as it’s one or the other.

We’d been remiss in the early months after her birth, too unwilling to leave Elizabeth to the care of nurses—me, for fear of losing another child, as I could too easily bring Augustus’s little smile to mind, the shade of his hair, the feel of his tiny hand in mine, at any hour of the brightest day or gloomiest night. And Victoria, in defiance of her own cold upbringing, not wanting our daughter to grow up with the terrible loneliness that nearly swallowed her whole and only ended, she swears, the morning I came to see her at Kensington. 

And now the baby expects us to keep her close, always, preferring the safety of our arms to any others. We have no intention of changing that, despite the whispers at court among gossiping courtiers who shake their heads with disapproval at our modern ways.

This is not the only disapproval we’ve garnered. I expect we’ll have collected a list of grievances that could bridge the English Channel before we’re done.

“I know how you like to contemplate the rooks,” Victoria teases her reply, her eyes sparkling with silver flecks in the flickering, midday sunlight. Her hair is worn down and loose around her shoulders, simply adorned, as she’d worn it as a girl—before her uncle’s death, before her coronation, before the weight of the crown sat so heavily on her small brow.

She wears no crown here. At Brocket Hall, we’re both able to relax our formal roles.

She, the Queen of the British Empire. And I…

She asked me once if I wanted the formal title of King Consort. She’d grown bold and brave after our marriage, and would have risked the wrath of many to give it to me. But I told her I’d rather she let it be, unwilling to bring more scandal to her regency than I’d already managed, just by falling in love with her. 

Besides, I’m old and set in my ways, happy with who I am. 

Victoria’s husband. Elizabeth’s father. These are the only titles that matter to me. 

We linger at that crossroads, in the company of the rooks. My daughter takes hold of the lapel of my jacket and lays her little head against my chest. My wife slips her arm through mine, as she glances up to remark on those birds I love so much.

“I’m glad rooks mate for life,” she squeezes my arm lightly, adopting the same words I once used to forsake her. Back then, I used them clumsily and false, mistaking deepest love for passing affection, not trusting my own feelings. Or hers. Victoria would correct my mistake, through patience, through stubbornness that rivaled own.

With kisses in the night that I was helpless to deny. 

She leans close, while admitting, “I don’t think I would be satisfied with anything less.”

“Nor I, ma’am,” I tell her, turning slightly to press a kiss against the top of her head. I murmur the understated words again, as they bear repeating, “Nor I.”


End file.
